Rock Revolution is a music video game developed by Zoë Mode and HB Studios and published by Konami. The game was released on 15 October 2008 for the Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. As with similar titles, the game uses various controllers to simulate the performance of rock music, primarily using guitar and drum controllers on its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions.
Rock Revolution received generally negative reviews from critics, who felt that the game was an inferior clone of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises with no distinguishing characteristics to set it apart from its competition; particularly the design of its drum kit controller, the game's interface, and its soundtrack of mostly cover versions as its worst aspects. The game experienced low sales numbers in its first month, selling around 3,000 copies.
Gameplay
Gameplay in Rock Revolution revolves around players attempting to simulate the playing of rock music using special instrument shaped controllers. Scrolling notes onscreen indicate the pattern and timing of buttons that must be pushed on the guitar or pads hit on the drum kit. Songs can feature "fill boxes" and "roll boxes" on drum charts, and hammer-on/pull-off's and "shred boxes" (must be strummed constantly for the duration) on guitar charts. Score multipliers are increased through larger combos, and a temporary bonus period can be activated when the player's lifebar, the "atmosphere meter", is maxed out.
On the Wii version, players instead use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk as air instrumentsplaying the songs by performing specific gestures and movements. Guitar and drum controllers for the Wii are not usable with the game. The DS version utilizes the touch screen and microphone, utilizing gestured movements for guitar play, playing a virtual drum kit on the touch screen itself with the stylus for drums, and the system's internal microphone for vocals.
Various game modes are featured in Rock Revolution. The game's career mode follows the career of the player's band, recording albums and playing live shows. These stages can feature specific challenges, such as reaching a certain score, performing a song without seeing the notes, avoiding false "poison notes", or completing songs with a limited number of mistakes. Local and online multiplayer is also offered on the console versions, including co-op and battle modes. A "Recording studio" sandbox mode is also available, where players can create their own songs with various options, such as different guitar and drum styles, chords, fills, and beats. Songs created in this mode however, cannot be played as a song in-game.
Development Konami had been known for their Bemani series of music simulation games in Japan. In particular, Konami's guitar simulation game GuitarFreaks (and its obscurity outside of Asia), influenced the American video game developer Harmonix to produce their own similar game, Guitar Hero. Konami filed for a trademark in the United States on the name "Guitar Revolution" on 29 June 2006. With a name patterned off Konami's own Dance Dance Revolution and Karaoke Revolution franchises, the trademark filing led to speculation that Konami was developing its own competitor to the Guitar Hero series.
Rock Revolution would be officially announced and presented by Konami at a press event in San Francisco on 15 May 2008. An early version of the game was demonstrated at the event, featuring songs by Twisted Sister, Avril Lavigne, The Ramones, and Quiet Riot, among other tracks. The Xbox 360 version was demonstrated with guitar controllers from Guitar Hero, but a newly designed drum controller specifically designed for Rock Revolution was also demonstrated. Associate product manager Mondona Akhazan stated that Rock Revolution would be a more drum-focused game, by contrast to other band games, which developers felt were putting more focus on the role of the guitarists. As such the Rock Revolution drum kit featured a layout containing 6 drum pads (as opposed to the four-pad layout used by Rock Band and Guitar Hero'''s five-pad layout), the largest being a snare drum located directly in front of the player.
The Wii and Nintendo DS versions would not use guitar and drum controllers; instead the Wii version uses the Wii Remote and Nunchuck as air instruments, and the Nintendo DS version uses a touchscreen and internal microphone to play instruments and vocals respectively. The ability to play as a vocalist remained exclusive to the DS version, as Konami felt including this feature in console versions could potentially affect the Karaoke Revolution series.
In September 2008, Konami officially confirmed that there would be no specific guitar controller made for Rock Revolution, and that both guitar and drum peripherals utilized by the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series would be compatible with the game's Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions; drum patterns would automatically be modified based on what controller a player is using. In a June 2008 interview, Konami's associate producer Keith Matejka had felt that there should be better compatibility between the peripherals used by recent music games, believing these different controllers only provided "slightly different" experiences from each other, and that they were expensive to manufacture and purchase. Both Sony and Microsoft later announced the controllers for Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 would be interchangeable between each other and Rock Revolution.
In the lead-up to the release of Rock Revolution, reports surfaced on 10 July 2008 that Konami filed a lawsuit against Harmonix and Viacom for patent infringement over Rock Band at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, claiming it infringed on Konami's patents on music simulation games. They also requested cash compensation and an order to stop sales of Rock Band. In February 2009, Harmonix sued Konami for infringing on their patents in Rock Revolution; the patents in question had cited some of Konami's patents as references. The two companies reached a settlement over the dispute in September 2010, the terms of which were not disclosed.
SoundtrackRock Revolution contains 41 songs on the Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 and 20 songs on the Nintendo DS. The majority of the songs are covers of original recordings (the exceptions being "Given Up" by Linkin Park, and "Paralyzer" by Finger Eleven).
Console song list TitleArtist"All My Life"Foo Fighters"All The Small Things"Blink-182"Am I Evil?"Metallica"Are You Gonna Be My Girl"Jet"Bad Reputation"Joan Jett"Blitzkrieg Bop"Ramones"Chop Suey!"System of a Down"Cum on Feel the Noize"Quiet Riot"Dance, Dance"Fall Out Boy"Detroit Rock City"Kiss"The Diary of Jane"Breaking Benjamin"Dirty Little Secret"All-American Rejects"Dr. Feelgood"Mötley Crüe"The End of Heartache"Killswitch Engage"Falling Away from Me"Korn"Given Up"Linkin Park"Heading Out to the Highway"Judas Priest"Highway Star"Deep Purple"Holy Wars...The Punishment Due"Megadeth"Joker & the Thief"Wolfmother"Kiss Me Deadly"Lita Ford"Last Resort"Papa Roach"Magic Man"Heart"No One Like You"Scorpions"Our Truth"Lacuna Coil"Pain"Three Days Grace"Paralyzer"Finger Eleven"Pull Me Under"Dream Theater"Round and Round"Ratt"Run to the Hills"Iron Maiden"Sk8er Boi"Avril Lavigne"Somebody Told Me"KillersThe Killers"The Spirit of Radio"Rush"Spoonman"Soundgarden"Still of the Night"Whitesnake"Stone Cold Crazy"Queen"Walk"Pantera"We're Not Gonna Take It"Twisted Sister"White Room"Cream"Won't Get Fooled Again"WhoThe Who"Youth Gone Wild"Skid Row
Downloadable content In addition to the 41 songs in the main setlist, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game also support new songs as downloadable content. Also, all songs in packs can be downloaded individually. All songs were available on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live unless otherwise noted.
Only two packs have been released, one featuring music by artists from Konami's Bemani music games, and one featuring music by heavy metal band Pantera.
TitleArtistRelease dateSingle / Pack name"No Pain, No Gain"The Rock Revolution BandSingle"She's The Bug"The Rock Revolution BandSingle"Death Real"Des-ROWBemani Track Pack"My Only Shining Star"Naoki Maeda remixed by KuroBemani Track Pack"Model DD8"Mutsuhiko IzumiBemani Track Pack"Progressive Baby"Daisuke KurosawaBemani Track Pack"CHIMERA"Daisuke KurosawaBemani Track Pack"5 Minutes Alone"PanteraPantera Track Pack"Mouth for War"PanteraPantera Track Pack"Cemetery Gates"PanteraPantera Track Pack"This Love"PanteraPantera Track Pack"I'm Broken"PanteraPantera Track Pack
Reception